This invention relates generally to ice piece makers for refrigerators and the like and more particularly to ice piece maker that make half crescent shaped ice pieces, and the method for making such half crescent shaped pieces.
Perhaps the most prevalent form of ice piece makers currently employed in home refrigerators and freezers make full crescent shaped ice pieces with crescent shaped parallel sides and a rectangularly shaped cross sectional profile viewed in a plane normal to the parallel sides, and further having a flat top surface.
The full crescent shaped ice pieces are easily formed and removed from ice piece makers and required simpler and less expensive ice piece making mechanisms than do makers of ice pieces of different configuration--i.e. cubes, cylinders, etc. Because of this feature, the full crescent shaped is preferred by most manufactures of domestic ice pieces makers. It remains, however, that, although adequate for many applications for ice pieces, the full crescent shaped presents difficulties in use in the home not only when used for cooling beverages in beverage glasses but also in the storage, removal and handling of the ice pieces in preparation of beverages, and other uses for ice pieces.
To overcome the above listed problems of full crescent shaped ice pieces ice makers which make half crescent shaped ice pieces have been developed such as shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,863,153 issued Jan. 30, 1990 to Trocinski and entitled "Making Ice In a Refrigerator" and in U.S. Pat. No. 4,923,494 issued May 8, 1990 to Karlovitz and entitled "Making Ice In a Refrigerator."
Moving half or full crescent shaped ice pieces out of the freezing tray enhances the risk, with most prior art devices, of an ice piece accidentally falling back into the tray before it is ejected from the tray, thereby increasing the risk of faulty operation of the ice maker even to the point of stalling the rotation of the shaft.
One of the problems presented by prior art ice piece makers, and particular half crescent ice piece makers, is due to the half crescent ice pieces becoming solidly frozen to the ejector element (the primary ejector element) which lies between the leading and lagging half crescent ice pieces. This ice bond between the leading and lagging half crescent ice pieces is sometimes sufficiently strong to resist being broken loose from the primary ejector elements when the leading half crescent ice piece impacts the ice piece stripper elements with the result that the rotating shaft will stall and must be freed by human help.
In half crescent shaped ice pieces there is another ice bond, identified herein as an ice bridge, which exists around the primary ejector elements and connects the leading half crescent ice piece to the lagging half crescent ice piece of each full crescent shaped ice piece. The above-described ice bridge must also be broken when the leading half crescent ice piece impacts the ice stripper elements in order to separate the leading half crescent ice piece from the lagging half ice piece of each full crescent ice piece.
It would mark a definite improvement in the art to provide an improved half crescent ice piece maker which efficiently and with a minimum of force ejects the leading and lagging rows of half crescent shaped ice pieces from the freezing tray as quickly as possible to minimize the dripping of water into the freezing tray, to minimize the risk of a leading half crescent ice piece from accidentally dropping into the freezing tray, and most importantly to virtually ensure the breaking apart of the leading and lagging rows of half crescent shaped ice pieces before the ejection thereof from the freezing tray occurs.